IN THE COMMENTS: Former law student notes the etymology of "testimony." It's from testicles. So you might re-think where to put the baby squirrel. But for us ladies, we know where to put the squirrel, and we don't want to testify anymore. From now on, let's give cleavagery.

Actually, this sort of exercise was a part of the trial by ordeal in pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon England. If the squirrel bit the woman, she was guilty. If the squirrel gently nuzzled the woman, she was innocent. I'm surprised a law professor wouldn't know that bit of legal history from the mother country.

Thank you for the reminder that testimony need not occur in an actual courtroom.

What I really meant (and should have written) was that testimony implies a degree of formality incompatible with Squirrel(s) In A Cleavage. ;)

I read the etymology link, and I have two observations.

First, the link is to a work by Jacques Derrida. As I understand it his view of the world is not exactly mainstream.

Second, he didn't write what you apparently think he wrote.

From the linked text:

In its Latin etymology, the witness (testis) is someone who is present as a third person (terstis). We would have to look very closely at this to understand what it might imply. "Testis" has a homonym in Latin. It ususually occurs in the plural, to mean "testicles". It even happens that Plautus plays on the word in Curculio, and exploits its being a homonym.

So "Testimony" is not derived from "testicles". It is derived from a Latin homonym of that word, and Derrida is exploiting its being a homonym (as he claims Plautus did).